Come play with us!

6 Jul 2010

Last year Laura and I went to an amazing event on the South Bank in London called the Hide & Seek Weekender – a weekend festival of games for all ages, where you basically played lots of fun, and often silly, games with random people and generally had a very good time. Laura blogged about it here, and I put up some photos here.

This coming weekend sees this year’s Hide & Seek event, again on London’s South Bank. It promises to be lots of fun, with some great looking games, and I really do encourage you to come along. What makes it particularly exciting for me is that this year, I’m on the other side of the fence, running one of the games!

After the 2009 Hide & Seek event, and the Playful conference later in the year, I decided I wanted to do something that was a bit more, well, playful. So last Christmas I started working on a mobile game for people to play – based on the idea of people running around areas and collecting and creating hidden clues. Having got the game into a rough shape I approached the Hide & Seek organisers, who are always looking for new games for the event. They put me in touch with a game designer, Sophie Sampson, and between us we’ve come up with the Time Trails game.

Time Trails involves you using your iPhone or iPad to find stories relating to the South Bank’s history – between World War II and The Festival of Britain, the whole area has changed a lot. We’ve left lots of clues dotted around in specific locations on the South Bank for you to collect. There’s also a trio of story trails to collect, where you can follow the journeys of people during the Festival of Britain in 1951, and experience life back then through their eyes.

That’s our game, and we do hope you’ll come along and have a go. Sophie, myself, and Laura, who’s been helping out too (in particular she’s put up well with being made to run around lots to help test the game tech :), will be manning a desk throughout the event. Regardless, you should definitely head down to the South Bank, specifically to the National Theatre, this weekend and take part – there’s loads of games to play, and Laura and I had a blast last year.